While the British public reacted to the latest terrorist strike there with stoicism and a practiced determination to get on with their lives, Germany has erupted in a rancorous dispute over how to deal with a terrorist threat that has yet to materialize here.

It's not for the first time, that I got the impression that Mr. Landler is exaggerating things and is actually drawing a picture of Germany which strucks me as... inaccurate.

In June, for the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the German Chancellery (Angela Merkel's equivalent of the White House) even summoned the so-called Security Group, a government round that meets only in periods of crisis, and which was this time attended by the state secretaries of the Interior, Foreign and Defense Ministries.
The reason for the special meeting -- which was chaired by Thomas de Maiziere, Angela Merkel's chief of staff at the Chancellery, was a secret CIA analysis that presents a list of reasons why Germany is currently particularly at risk, in the United States government's opinion. Besides Germany's participation in NATO's Afghanistan mission, the reasons include the high number of German Islamists with contacts to Pakistan and the good opportunities for traveling to Western Europe that people returning from the Hindu Kush region enjoy.

As for Hussain al-M., President Pervez Musharraf's diplomats have signaled that the German government could choose whether it wants him or not. The case of the stateless Lebanese man al-M., who holds a permanent residence permit in Neunkirchen, in Germany's Saarland region, is considered especially delicate in Berlin. Government officials still remember all too well another Pakistani detainee for whom Berlin took no responsibility (more...) -- that of German-born Turkish citizen Murat Kurnaz. Kurnaz ended up at Guantanamo.

After three failed terror attacks in London and Glasgow, the Brits continue with the big public events this weekend, like the Gay Pride Parade, Wimbledon and the concert for Diana. The German paper Tagesspiegel praises the "stiff upper lip." The Nosemonkey in London has the right attitude and writes "Terrorists these days are rubbish."
Would Germans and Americans be as cool and continue with business as usual?

Shortly after the London attacks of 7/7/2005, the We're not Afraid campaign started. Remember the funny pictures demonstrating fearlessness in solidarity with Britain and in defiance of the global terror movements? A good reminder from the "We're not Afraid" About us page:

We refuse to respond to aggression and hatred in kind. Instead, we who are not afraid will continue to live our lives the best way we know how. We will work, we will play, we will laugh, we will live. We will not waste one moment, nor sacrifice one bit of our freedom, because of fear. We are not afraid.

Officials in Washington have since realized that the German investigation is more than just a symbolic act. This week in Berlin, a group of senior officials from the interior, foreign and justice ministries will meet to discuss the sensitive issue of how the German government should handle the Munich petition for "arrest for the purposes of extradition." There is general agreement within the government in Berlin that the request should be promptly delivered to the Bush administration, which would be tantamount to an official request for the arrest of the men being sought. (...)
At a recent lunch in the German Embassy in Washington, Michael Hayden, the new CIA director, complained about the "bottomless criticism" from Europe that the US government faces for abducting suspicious Islamists. One US diplomat calls Germany's approach the "German double standard." On the one hand, he says, the Germans seek to benefit from information gleaned by the CIA. On the other, they are careful to keep their hands clean. According to US diplomats, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has made it clear to her German counterpart, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that the investigations of the agents present a serious problem.

The US agents were not as smart as the police had assumed -- or perhaps criminally negligent. Thanks to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), all it took was a simple computer search for the investigators in Old Europe, without any official assistance from the US Department of Justice, to determine the real names of "Captain James Fairing," "Eric Fain" and "Kirk James Bird."

Germany has barred the makers of a movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler from filming at German military sites because its star Tom Cruise is a Scientologist, the Defence Ministry said on Monday.

Every 9.62 days, there is an equivalent amount of casualties in Iraq & Afghanistan as September 11th. (...) In 11 days as many Iraqi & Afghani civilians are killed as the entire amount of American military personnel killed since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable. The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects. While billions are spent each year to upgrade satellites and other high-tech spy machinery, the experts say, interrogation methods — possibly the most important source of information on groups like Al Qaeda — are a hodgepodge that date from the 1950s, or are modeled on old Soviet practices. (...)
President Bush has insisted that those secret “enhanced” techniques are crucial, and he is far from alone. The notion that turning up pressure and pain on a prisoner will produce valuable intelligence is a staple of popular culture from the television series “24” to the recent Republican presidential debate, where some candidates tried to outdo one another in vowing to get tough on captured terrorists. A 2005 Harvard study supported the selective use of “highly coercive” techniques.
But some of the experts involved in the interrogation review, called “Educing Information,” say that during World War II, German and Japanese prisoners were effectively questioned without coercion. “It far outclassed what we’ve done,” said Steven M. Kleinman, a former Air Force interrogator and trainer, who has studied the World War II program of interrogating Germans. The questioners at Fort Hunt, Va., “had graduate degrees in law and philosophy, spoke the language flawlessly,” and prepared for four to six hours for each hour of questioning, said Mr. Kleinman, who wrote two chapters for the December report. Mr. Kleinman, who worked as an interrogator in Iraq in 2003, called the post-Sept. 11 efforts “amateurish” by comparison to the World War II program, with inexperienced interrogators who worked through interpreters and had little familiarity with the prisoners’ culture.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba. For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore. (...) Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.
According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher. (...) Aid workers say thousands of Iraqi women work as prostitutes in Syria, and point out that as violence in Iraq has increased, the refugee population has come to include more female-headed households and unaccompanied women.

For the last six years I have interviewed terrorists, trying to discover what makes people join a holy-war organization and what makes them stay. Although the terrorists have described a variety of individual grievances, there was one common thread: their overwhelming feelings of humiliation.

IT WASN'T AN edifying spectacle: a group of middle-aged white guys competing with one another to see who could do the best impersonation of Jack Bauer, torture enthusiast and the central character on Fox's hit show "24." In Tuesday's Republican presidential primary debate, Fox News moderator Brit Hume — who appears to have been watching too much "24" himself — raised what he described as "a fictional but we think plausible scenario involving terrorism and the response to it." He then laid out the kind of "ticking-bomb" scenario on which virtually every episode of "24" is premised — precisely the kind that most intelligence experts consider fictional and entirely implausible.

a question about military action against Iran with the chorus of the surf-rocker classic "Barbara Ann." "That old, eh, that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran," he said. "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, anyway, ah ..." His audience laughed.

U.S. and German officials fear terrorists are in the advanced planning stages of an attack on U.S. military personnel or tourists in Germany. "The information behind the threat is very real," a senior U.S. official told ABC News.
German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble told reporters, "The danger level is high. We are part of the global threat by Islamist terrorism." Of particular concern, according to U.S. and German law enforcement officials, is Patch Barracks, the headquarters for U.S. European Command, near Stuttgart.

A threat warning issued by United States in Germany last month could involve attack plans by an al Qaeda-affiliated group of Kurdish extremists, officials said on Friday. U.S. and German authorities said, however, that there was no new threat in Germany beyond the official April 20 State Department warning. They were responding to a report by ABC News on its Web site on Friday that officials believed terrorists were in the advanced planning stages for an attack on U.S. military personnel or tourists in Germany. In the April 20 warning, the U.S. embassy in Germany encouraged Americans in the country to increase their vigilance and take appropriate steps to bolster their personal security.

Hundreds of German police combed offices and flats associated with leftwing activists across six northern cities yesterday, saying they had evidence that a terrorist organisation was planning to disrupt next month's G8 summit.

Well, I hope it's your families, I hope it's your families that suffer the consequences [of a terrorist attack].

Dear Dr. Steger:

Senator W. Fulbright's idea was to build up a world of tolerance, mutual understanding - and even better - friendship; instead of animosity. If one lifts these ideas on a bigger scale, how can anyone see a reason in killing another person in an amok run like this. No one who bears Senator Fulbight's ideas and spirit in his own character can see any sense in this tragedy.

Members and Board of the German Fulbright Alumni Association convey their sympathies to the families of Professor Jamie Bishop (Fulbright scholar to Christian-Albrechts University at Kiel, Germany), Professor Liviu Librescu and all those who suffered from the Virginia Tech killings. In such a time of bereavement, it might be comforting to feel that one is not alone and that people all over the world also sympathize with these families.

Our most sincere condolences especially to Stefanie Hofer

On behalf of the board

Uwe Koch
President
Fulbright Alumni e.V.
German Fulbright Association